http://www.osnews.com/story/18777/Review_A9home_vs_Koolu Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:29:12 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?278715 http://osnews.com/thread?278715 Seems like an easy win for Koolu.

I was interested as well in Koolu but was pissed off by the shipping costs (100 USD = 50 percent of the devices price).

So I sent them a mail asking if I could save on shipping.
Koolu sent me a friendly mail back that I could use www.koolu.nl (I live in Europe)

Well, this site has been offline for 2 weeks now.
Not very professional.

But there are a lot more interesting sites not touched by the article (to be honest it A9home sounds vastly overpriced)

Have a look at these:

http://www.zonbu.com/home/index.htm
http://www.fit-pc.com/index.htm
http://www.linutop.com/
http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html

They all have different strongholds but all seem better than A9Home...

For people with a home network, this is the way to go.
Forget Windows Home Server, buy a cheap NAS and a cheap computer like Koolu or Zonbu. It's not much more than Home Edition, but INCLUDING the hardware. Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Wondercool) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?278815 http://osnews.com/thread?278815 The A9Home is expensive for two main reasons, both of which are related: It runs RISC OS, and RISC OS is not cheap. Some would say it's hideously over-priced for what it is. The other reason is the hardware RISC OS requires. The CPU module in the A9Home most likely costs twice that of an AMD Geode - ARMs, and the RAM for them, are not very cheap. Also being assembled and manufactured mostly in the UK doesn't help the price, here. Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rjek) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?279165 http://osnews.com/thread?279165 I'd say the Zonbu wins, hands down. The Fit-PC is close.

Here are the advantages for Zonbu:

* more expandibility (CF, IDE, mini-PCI for wireless, 6 USB ports vs. 2, internally accessible RS-232 ports)
* faster processor (VIA 1.2ghz vs. AMD Geode 500mhz)
* more RAM (512mb vs 256)
* S-Video TV-out
* ~12% cheaper ($250 vs. $285)

While the Fit-PC has a few slight advantages:

* two Ethernet adapters vs. one for the Zonbu
* exposed RS-232 serial port
* slightly lower power consumption (5 W vs 10 W typically)
* 40gb HD versus 4gb CompactFlash for Zonbu

I also feel that the Zonbu is nicer-looking than the Fit-PC. The Fit-PC might have an edge if you want to build a custom router... Zonbu seems to win hands down for a living room PC or most other uses.

There's a pretty nice walk-through dissection of the Zonbu internals here, showing all the ports: http://gallery.zonbulive.net/main.php?g2_itemId=62 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moxfyre) Comments